Excerpt

We don’t even consider that, at first contact, buyers have not fully defined their ‘need’, are in their early stages of internal discovery and criteria alignment, and prefer to find ways to solve problems with internal or familiar resources.

We have designed a failed system that manages only a small part of a buying decision. We end up blaming buyers, blaming products, blaming marketing efforts, blaming ourselves – and we never blame the sales model. Instead we work harder and harder to push better and better using the same failed approach, getting the same results.

This is why buyers seem so stupid: We are focusing on the need, the pain, the solution, the price. They are focusing on maintaining systems integrity. Of course, when it’s time to discuss, and possibly place, our solution, we need to understand exactly what the ‘need’ is. But we have other work to do first.